Like the movies, corporate acquisitions are a collaborative art: miscast one role, and you can ruin the whole picture. The CEO may be the star of the show, but a successful deal demands a strong executive board and chief financial officer—along with investment bankers, lawyers, accountants and public relations advisors—especially when the deal in question is the purchase of a foreign company. As Chinese companies look to expand abroad through acquisitions, it’s worth reviewing the difference each member of the team can make. Here’s our take on how a company should go about choosing the cast of characters prior to an M&A.

Few direct actions of the CEO can have as much impact on the future of a company as the decision to make an acquisition. For Chinese companies that have decided to buy a foreign company, the stakes may be even higher. Unfortunately, it’s not only lonely at the top; often, there’s not much oxygen. One of the biggest risk factors in a merger is that the CEOs involved pursue the deal based on a less-than-rational reading of its merits. Overconfidence, ignorance and greed can lead to the loss of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in value in a CEO in the grip of a merger mania.

Sometimes the biggest obstacle that stands between you and your goal is your wayward mind. You often start something new, but end up not finishing it. Think of the number of times you took a gym membership. Or vowed to eat healthy. Or decided on a career choice. What happened? So why do we deviate from our well-chosen and well-thought out goals? Francesca Gino, a behavioral scientist and the author of Sidetracked, researched this problem and found the psychological drivers behind our inability to stick to a plan of action. In this interview, she suggests ways to identify these drivers—and combat them.

Over the past 30 years Haier CEO Zhang Ruimin has led the company through several path-breaking business model changes, which have helped the company build a strong brand, grow both organically and through acquisitions, globalize and “get close to the customer”. Zhang is now leading the company through yet another transformation to make it what he calls an “internet-based platform company” made up of extremely responsive micro-enterprises. For the closest parallel, think of a Silicon Valley within a company. In this rare interview, he talks about his management philosophy.

White goods manufacturer Haier is turning itself into an internet-based ‘platform company’ made up of several micro-enterprises. The idea is to create an organization that is extremely responsive to customer needs, constantly cultivates new ideas and innovates quickly. To do that it needs to discard the traditional organizational structure where ideas flow top-down and execution is done bottom-up. The company is now a flat organization which is a marketplace of ideas, talent and resources. The plan sounds good in theory but will the execution be easy?

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Information, analysis, and interviews about the Chinese economy and doing business in China, from the people who know it best. Presented by the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, China's leading business school.